Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy

Approaches to Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy
Author: Christopher Kleinhenz
Publisher: Modern Language Association
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2020-02-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1603294287

Dante's Divine Comedy can compel and shock readers: it combines intense emotion and psychological insight with medieval theology and philosophy. This volume will help instructors lead their students through the many dimensions--historical, literary, religious, and ethical--that make the work so rewarding and enduringly relevant yet so difficult. Part 1, "Materials," gives instructors an overview of the important scholarship on the Divine Comedy. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," describe ways to teach the work in the light of its contemporary culture and ours. Various teaching situations (a first-year seminar, a creative writing class, high school, a prison) are considered, and the many available translations are discussed.

Undead in the West

Undead in the West
Author: Cynthia J. Miller
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2012-08-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 081088545X

In Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have assembled a collection of essays that explore the many tropes and themes through which undead Westerns make the genre’s inner plagues and demons visible, and lay siege to a frontier tied to myths of strength, ingenuity, freedom, and independence. The volume is divided into three sections: “Reanimating Classic Western Tropes” examines traditional Western characters, symbolism, and plot devices and how they are given new life in undead Westerns; “The Moral Order Under Siege” explores the ways in which the undead confront classic values and morality tales embodied in Western films; and “And Hell Followed with Him” looks at justice, retribution, and retaliation at the hands of undead angels and avenger. The subjects explored here run the gamut from such B films as Curse of the Undead and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula to A-list features like From Dusk ‘til Dawn and Jonah Hex, as well as animated films (Rango) and television programs (The Walking Dead and Supernatural). Other films discussed include Sam Raimi’s Bubba Ho-Tep, John Carpenter’s Vampires, George Romero’s Land of the Dead, andSergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. Featuring several illustrations and a filmography, Undead in the West will appeal to film scholars, especially those interested in hybrid genres, as well as fans of the Western and the supernatural in cinema.

Dante's Divine Comedy

Dante's Divine Comedy
Author: Joseph Luzzi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2024-11-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691255644

The life and times of Dante’s soaring poetic allegory of the soul’s redemptive journey toward God Written during his exile from Florence in the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy describes the poet’s travels through hell, purgatory, and paradise, exploring the state of the human soul after death. His poema sacro, sacred poem, profoundly influenced Renaissance writers and artists such as Giovanni Boccaccio and Sandro Botticelli and was venerated by modern critics including Erich Auerbach and Harold Bloom. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” narrates the remarkable reception of Dante’s masterpiece, one of the most consequential religious books ever written. Tracing the many afterlives of Dante’s epic poem, Joseph Luzzi shows how it left its mark on the work of such legendary authors as John Milton, Mary Shelley, and James Joyce while serving as a source of inspiration for writers like Primo Levi and Antonio Gramsci as they faced the most extreme forms of political oppression. He charts how the dialogue between religious and secular ideas in The Divine Comedy has shaped issues ranging from changing conceptions of women’s identity and debates about censorship to the role of canonical literature in popular culture. An intimate portrait of a work that has challenged and inspired generations of readers, Dante’s “Divine Comedy” reveals how Dante’s strikingly original and controversial vision of the afterlife can help us define our spiritual beliefs, better understand ourselves, and navigate the complexities of modern life.

Dante’s Divine Comedy in Early Renaissance England

Dante’s Divine Comedy in Early Renaissance England
Author: Jonathan Hughes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350146293

Dante's Divine Comedy in Early Renaissance England compares the intellectual, emotional, and religious world of Dante in 13th-century Florence with that of a group of English intellectuals gathered around Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the King, Henry VI. Here, Jonathan Hughes establishes that there was a Renaissance in 15th-century England, encouraged by the discovery and translations of works of Greek philosophers and developments in science and medicine; and that vernacular writers in Gloucester's circle, such as John Lydgate and Robert Hoccleve, were of fundamental importance in exploring the meaning of the self and man's relationship with the natural world and the classical past. However, the appearance in 15th-century England of Dante's 'Commedia', the most popular work of the Middle Ages, served to remind writers and readers of the cost of intellectual enquiry: the loss of faith in a harmonious and beautiful world; the redemptive power of the love of a woman; and the tangible presence of an afterlife. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, this innovative study shines a new perspective on Dante scholarship as well as offering a unique anaylsis of intellectual thought and culture in 15th-century England.

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Dante's The Divine Comedy

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Dante's The Divine Comedy
Author: David Dean Brockman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1315464209

David Dean Brockman connects spirituality with psychoanalysis throughout this book as he looks at Dante’s early writings, his life story and his "polysemous" classical poem The Divine Comedy. Dante wanted to create a document that would educate the common man about his journey from brokenness to growth and a solid integration of body, self, and soul. This book draws the resemblance between Dante’s poem and the "journey" that patients experience in psychoanalytic therapy. It will be the first total treatment of Dante’s work in general, and The Divine Comedy in particular, using the psychoanalytic method. This fascinating study of Dante’s The Divine Comedy will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists, as well as those still in training. Academics and students of psychology, spirituality, religion, and literature may also be interested in Brockman’s in-depth study of Dante’s work.

Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy

Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy
Author: George Corbett
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1783741724

Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy is a reappraisal of the poem by an international team of thirty-four scholars. Each vertical reading analyses three same-numbered cantos from the three canticles: Inferno i, Purgatorio i and Paradiso i; Inferno ii, Purgatorio ii and Paradiso ii; etc. Although scholars have suggested before that there are correspondences between same-numbered cantos that beg to be explored, this is the first time that the approach has been pursued in a systematic fashion across the poem. This collection – to be issued in three volumes – offers an unprecedented repertoire of vertical readings for the whole poem. As the first volume exemplifies, vertical reading not only articulates unexamined connections between the three canticles but also unlocks engaging new ways to enter into core concerns of the poem. The three volumes thereby provide an indispensable resource for scholars, students and enthusiasts of Dante. The volume has its origin in a series of thirty-three public lectures held in Trinity College, the University of Cambridge (2012-2016) which can be accessed at the ‘Cambridge Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy’ website.

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity
Author: Prue Shaw
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2014-02-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0871407809

The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time. Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem. This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—the qualities that make the Commedia perhaps the greatest literary work of all time and not simply a medieval treatise on morality and religion. The book provides a graphic account of the complicated geography of Dante's version of the afterlife and a sure guide to thirteenth-century Florence and the people and places that influenced him. At the same time it offers a literary experience that lifts the reader into the universal realms of poetry and mythology, creating links not only to the classical world of Virgil and Ovid but also to modern art and poetry, the world of T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and many others. Dante's questions are our questions: What is it to be a human being? How should we judge human behavior? What matters in life and in death? Reading Dante helps the reader to understand Dante’s answers to these timeless questions and to see how surprisingly close they sometimes are to modern answers. Reading Dante is an astonishingly lyrical work that will appeal to both those who’ve never read the Commedia and those who have. It underscores Dante's belief that poetry can change human lives.

Dante's Divine Comedy

Dante's Divine Comedy
Author: K. P. Clarke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100940086X

The first of its kind, this guide enables readers to get as close as possible to the words of Dante's Comedy. Opening up interpretative possibilities that only become available through reading the poem in its original form, it equips students with an enjoyable and accessible grammatical introduction to the language of early Italian. Including a series of passages drawn from Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, the text is accompanied by a detailed glossary, followed by a commentary which pays particular attention to matters of language and style. Further reading and study questions are provided at the end of each section, prompting new and fresh ways of engaging with the text. Readers will discover how, by listening to Dante in his own words, one may newly and more fully appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the Comedy.

The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences

The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences
Author: Giuseppe C. Di Scipio
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1988-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9027220409

The guiding principle of this volume is the concept of the artes liberales, the trivium and quadrivium, as branches of learning that are rooted in Dante Alighieri's mind. The present volume contains essays by leading international scholars on the various scientific and artistic disciplines which form the background, sources, and presence in Dante's opus.